Overview

Founded in 1912, Greenville Health System (GHS) is a private not-for-profit academic healthcare delivery system committed to medical excellence through clinical care, education, and research. With seven hospitals, several outpatient locations, and more than 200 physician practices, GHS is the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in South Carolina.

GHS has a deep commitment to medical education and recently opened the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville on the Greenville Memorial Medical Campus.

Challenges

In 2013, Greenville Health System’s existing endpoint security did not provide the protection the organization needed against the changing threat landscape. The existing solution lacked the capabilities to handle new threats that appear daily. When Chris Schmidt, Manager of Information Security, joined GHS the same year, he identified some of these gaps in the security system. “We could identify threats at the gateway, but we had no way to respond and resolve those attacks,” said Chris Schmidt, Manager of Information at GHS.

In addition to needing a security solution to protect the network and endpoints, GHS also needed to comply with HIPAA and other regulations. “Having a solid security partner to help us meet risk management requirements is essential for us. Ensuring compliance is an important part of our security posture,” said Rich Rogers, Vice President of Information Services and Chief Information Officer at Greenville Health System.

Finally, because GHS didn’t have a large IT team in place at the time, it wanted a security solution that could be easily deployed and managed. The team also wanted a partner that delivered exceptional support. “We have a deep understanding of technology and wanted a level of expert support and responsiveness to meet our needs,” said Schmidt.

Why Trend Micro

Schmidt led the process of evaluating several security vendors to choose the best solution for their environment. Trend Micro offered the most comprehensive and responsive solution available. “It’s not a signature-based threat landscape anymore, so we decided to shift to proactive security,” said Schmidt. “Trend Micro offered everything we needed to detect and stop threats before they infiltrated our systems.”

In addition, the Trend Micro solutions were easy to deploy and offered responsive support. Trend Micro also offered centralized policy management and visibility, so GHS could view their entire threat protection landscape from a single pane of glass. “After looking at all the vendors and their solutions, Trend Micro was the clear winner,” said Schmidt. “Trend Micro is able to give me visibility across the whole threat lifecycle from entry to lateral movement to exfiltration.”

Results

For more than three years, Trend Micro solutions have provided significant benefits for GHS. When the IT team first deployed Trend Micro™ OfficeScan™, they immediately recognized a reduction in signature-based malware. Trend Micro™ Deep Security™ discovered and cleaned malware from servers. With Trend Micro™ Control Manager, GHS gained control over their endpoints. “This has allowed us to spend more time tuning our security posture rather than chasing threats,” said Schmidt.

Ransomware attacks at GHS escalated sharply in 2016 with Trend Micro identifying approximately 1,000 ransomware threats. So far in 2017, eight ransomware incidents have been detected, and all have been stopped. Although GHS still detects more than 300 suspicious threats daily, Trend Micro provides the tools to investigate and stop them all.

What's Next

As a leading healthcare organization, GHS understands its security must stay ahead of continually shifting threats. “We’re interested in integrating Trend Micro TippingPoint Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System, and we’re excited to see Trend Micro’s new XGen security with the optimized set of techniques including things like high-fidelity machine learning and behavioral analysis,” said Schmidt.